What About the Ukrainian ‘Counteroffensive’?
After ‘the de facto declaration of the beginning of the military onslaught’, not one single objective evidence was presented of its success.
Ukrainian long announced, long awaited counteroffensive has officially begun! Hip, hip, hooray! At last! Though the courage and bravery of the Russian army have stopped them in their tracks in the Zaporozhye region. The tactics deployed by the Ukrainian troops relying on the ‘indestructible’ Bradleys and ‘elusive’ Leopards have proven to be smashingly suicidal for the Ukrainians. None have lived up to their overly inflated expectations. The somewhat trivial detail that a Polish general from within the NATO HQs has reportedly called the Ukrainian generals ‘idiots’ who have managed to obliterate everything the Collective West has given them including the elite Ukraine troops who somehow suddenly ceased to exist’ is rather telling of the complete and embarrassing Ukrainian fiasco which occurred there.
Shall we now take a look at what President Vladimir Putin has had to say on the occasion in his recent address to the nation?
President Vladimir Putin: ‘What can I say? Firstly, I can say that the counteroffensive has begun. The use of strategic Ukrainian reserves indicates that. Secondly, the Ukrainian army did not perform any of the assignments in any of the parts assigned to it. That is an obvious fact. As I have said already, the combat has been ongoing for five days. For instance, yesterday and the day before, for these two days, the fights have been very intense and in none of these the opponent had much success. All that was achieved thanks to the courage and heroism of our (Russian) soldiers, appropriate organization and management of our army as well as great efficiency of the Russian weaponry, particularly modern weaponry. Yes, we still do not have sufficient amounts of modern weaponry but the defence industry and the defence complex of our country are being developed rapidly and I am confident that all the assignments entrusted upon them will undoubtedly be solved. Intensive increase of our modern weaponry is ongoing. We have noticed that these days the Ukrainian regime suffers huge losses. It is a known fact that the losses during the offensive operations on the Ukrainian side are 3: 1. That is a standard thing. However, in this case the indicators are much higher. I will not provide figures now but they are enormous.’
In an almost unprecedented example of a political accord of sorts in between Russia and the USA, New York Times indicated last Monday that both sides seem to have inferred that a long announced (and a long delayed) Ukraine counter-offensive may have finally begun. Though New York Times is still unsure if one looks at their hesitant headlines: Has Ukraine’s Counteroffensive Begun?
The Economist published a report on the same day that the Western officials agree the attacks on 4th June truly mark the beginning of an offensive. I cannot help noticing the odd academic hedging in their headlines though: Ukrainian counteroffensive appears to have begun. All the lingering suspicions seem to have proven true when Hanna Maliar, the Ukrainian Minister of Defence Deputy, confirmed it in public. The offensive reportedly branched out into a number of directions, she said, which was reported by CNN. The U.S. intelligence further elaborated that they have come to this conclusion among other things that the Kiev offensive most probably has begun among other things thanks to the images taken via military satellites which are equipped with the infrastructure facilities for the monitoring of the artillery fire and the launching of the missiles.
The U.S. military analysts reported that to their understanding the Ukrainian military units are making probes with the initial penetration attacks so as to detect the positions and the military might of the Russian troops. This is a traditional tactic, the newspaper added, which the Ukrainian troops apparently prepared for in their drills. Deputy Minister of Defence Hanna Maliar added on the same occasion: ‘We are happy for every meter’. We can perhaps only assume she meant every meter they allegedly gained in their alleged defeat of the Russian forces. ‘This day today is a great success for our troops’ – she added. But then an uncharacteristic complete silence followed. Not even one single meter of their great success was shown to the general public, for which they were gleefully jumping with joy.
On Tuesday the 6th June, the Russian Minister of Defence, Sergey Shoigu addressed the public presenting the most catastrophic numbers, which may certainly provide an explanation for that most ‘uninterrupted’ silence on the part of the Ukrainians. During the three days of the Ukrainian offensive, the Kiev regime armed forces suffered cataclysmic losses, which would hardly be regarded as a resounding success: 3715 soldiers, 52 tanks, 207 armoured combat vehicles, 5 airplanes and 2 helicopters in total; there were 71 deaths, 210 wounded soldiers and 15 destroyed tanks on the Russian side, according to the official data. The said figures related to the 52 Ukrainian tanks and 207 armoured combat vehicles are all the more intriguing if we take into account the reports by Reuters and many other Western mainstream media that Ukraine got 230 tanks and 1550 armoured vehicles from their NATO sponsors, which may well be an indicator that it lost almost one fourth of their tanks and one seventh of the whole number of combat vehicles in the course of three days, which were made available to it for the warfare against Russia.
There is certainly no way to double check all the facts and figures so that all the opposing sides in the conflict might agree on them to some extent.
To a layperson such as myself, a military offensive presupposes a military onslaught of very broad proportions which are carried out by strategic and operational groups on the war front or a part of the war front with the limited or radical goal(s), which can produce a greater impact on the outcome of one part of the war or the war completely as a whole. On the other hand, the use of a set of offensive actions is a principle in all theories of warfare which presupposes that the armed forces of one particular country continuously try to improve their position into a better one.
If we put the semantics aside, there remains a fact that all the conflicting sides should at least confer that after ‘the de facto declaration of the beginning of the military onslaught’, not one single objective evidence was presented of its success, which can only go to say that it must have been a dismal failure and that the price they had to pay could not possibly be negligible at all.
In the article at the end of April this year, The Times elaborated with their typically British profound cynicism, that despite the fact that 98 % of the promised equipment was delivered, Ukraine was not ready for its great offensive though it had no other choice. The Kiev regime had to begin the offensive regardless of the fact that even now at this point final battle for Bakhmut was happening. Additionally, the ammunition is being expended so quickly that the Collective West cannot keep pace with it.
At this point, for instance, the Ukrainians are using more grenades than the U.S. produces for the whole year. But then again, Kiev had no real choice but to kick off ‘the great spring offensive’ (with the usual fanfare of trumpets sounded by Stoltenberg, von der Leyen and Austin only too often). The alleged spring offensive, coincidentally, now appears to have evolved into the summer offensive. Oh, well, a matter of semantics again?
Its leaders had no other alternative but to persist in their somewhat ‘ritualistic display ’ of moral support for Ukraine complete with the abundant military aid they shovel off there; regrettably, they have to express what their Washington liberal Neocons rather distastefully call ‘the profit from their investment’. One can only presume that it is a case of ‘like investment, like profit’.
Some German portals now all of a sudden have communicated coyly though that Ukraine ‘unexpectedly’ is not capable of the standard counteroffensive of epic proportions. Conversely, to maintain combat morale and optimism to the optimal level, necessary for any ‘feat’ of mainstream media propaganda, the Economist mentioned that the elite Ukrainian forces have not yet appeared on the battlefield. Shortly afterwards the destruction of the Kakhovka Dam in the middle of the night may have obscured the Ukrainian counteroffensive into insignificance because until the night when the hydroelectric power plant Kakhovka was demolished, there was not much left of the counteroffensive.
If anyone even wonders who may have destroyed the Kakhovka Dam and caused the floods of devastating proportions in the whole lower course of the Dnieper River, (after a superb series of in-depth highly credible analyses by Seymour Hersh on the Nord Stream blasts), of course the Western mainstream media would repeat in chorus ad absurdum: ‘The Russians did it’. And the (puppet) politicians such as the presidents of European Council Charles Michel and the outgoing NATO General Secretary, (utterly obnoxious) Jens Stoltenberg would nod and screech in humiliating submission.
Then suddenly the due public attention was drawn to the fact that the Ukrainian Commander, Major General Andriy Kovalchuck openly talked about the plans to demolish the hydro plant in Washington Post last year.
Back in 2022, the leadership of the Armed Forces of Ukraine openly announced plans to destroy the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station on the Dnieper’ Russia’s permanent representative to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya said. He added that the leadership of the Armed Forces of Ukraine openly announced plans to destroy the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station on the Dnieper. He cited a quote from the material of The Washington Post on December 29, 2022. The Ukrainians, “according to him, even launched a test strike” from American MLRS HIMARS on one of the locks of the dam, making three holes in the metal to see if the water could rise enough to block Russian crossings.
Kovalchuck also somewhat boastfully confirmed that they launched a test strike on the dam. And then shortly afterwards on Thursday evening, the Coordinator for Strategic Communications at the National Security Council in the White House, John Kirby said that the U.S. has not yet found out with certainty what really happened in the hydroelectric power plant. Intriguingly, on the very same day Washington Post published that CIA knew that Ukrainians were responsible for the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines. it ‘appears that CIA had intelligence of detailed Ukrainian plan to attack Nord Stream pipeline’
THE DISCORD LEAKS | The CIA learned last June, via a European spy agency, that a six-person team of Ukrainian special operations forces intended to sabotage the Russia-to-Germany natural gas project.
It is absolutely mindboggling why the hydroelectric power plant was destroyed. One wonders what the destiny of the Ukrainian counteroffensive will be. How much should we be worried because of the leaked information that Ukraine (read: U.S. and Pentagon in panic) has had parallel plans to launch an attack by use of a dirty nuclear bomb against Russia?
